I wish we both spoke English

No. It was better when we didn't and I had no
choice but be on my own in my own language. I
could only tell the truth somehow all that
silence made pretending die. No need for two-step
we had no-step and still desire, what we call
time fused into long spaces alone on slopes
of yellow Andean prairie camera pans on a travel bus
the body tightness brought by the image of you. Each second
splintered from the watch in my white hand flew into
a deep sky and you were somewhere past in a
black coat and my name stuffy in your doe's body. I forgot
before forgot crying on my flight only a man handed
me a tissue who looked like Burt Reynolds. Most I know
we were cool two in your kitchen over tea and burnt
toast forgot but didn't stop all the things we call
transitory feet down not the way Genevieve grieves. Beware
lullabies fainting fits a touch of your chicken neck wrists
ears dripped with city rain but our hands sealed saying we
are this we make this. --again I don't have your
language now. I don't think about your brown but mine hands
the mechanic hands of a typist in a big city eyes
the cool eyes of birds that cluster around gray statues.

I might sleep in a chestnut or wake
a length of one song after dawn,
wade over frozen serviceberries like a strangled
bark in the gray of late October. I might
sleep for dreams after the chimes of helpless first light
and the steam of the kettle, oh, I'll work when I want.
I know it's not hard to push past the sour of the throat up
the mountain with snowflakes on my collarbone--it's not hard, once
it's part of panting. It's fine I
use fingers to dig though
cold echoes in handbone long after--things
slide more sharp in dry air.
I might put a record on or hum
a voice like nightsnow, think
of rabbits resting on pine boughs in
the shuffle of porchlights. Even the
gunshot can't hurt, if it does it's just
the brown grass under the snow. It's just the tea
got cold. I know
where to find berries. It doesn't do me much
good now.

Poem to a Beirut song on the radio and a verse about a jar

Somebody wrote a poem in my notebook which began
with something in a jar
and I wondered what was kept there.
(Of course I thought it didn't concern me--
what a body does when it lays
in the soil, how roads change over years
in towns we love--those are
subjects for endings. But you don't
begin where you want to end) so I started
with a jar and asked my muse where to go from there.
She said how should I know?
I can't see into thy heart you fool.
I said I can't either;
that's what the poem is for you fool.
So I tossed the jar aside because it made no
difference and I picked up a song
because my heart recognized it even though I didn't
know why. Maybe because of sex
because it was the song a boy sang and I became
dark and warm when the boy became
a ghost humming as he descended a stairwell.
And then I descended too--our hands
moved over the same spaces, our
eyes sealed together in a gleaming place (maybe the jar)
but here I was in my rocking chair
and he went on
like a drunkard, sure of himself but without reason.
Singing made him a man, throaty-voiced like a Spaniard,
pearly-voiced like an Arab. His sex or
his descent without knowing why and his
even skin opened up a pocket for a girl (I made him up too)
because she imagined his song
bent stars in a deep sky
despite his not knowing (maybe
there was a song under the song; maybe
the song itself was enough); his skin
was even and held light
in the dark stair (my heart-jar)
and it was singing that put him there. Otherwise,
tell me why my rocking chair is so far and
I don't remember writing this.

Annotation of a Body in Western Montana in September

Weeds
Driving west I dream of weeds sprouting from my body which I can easily pull.
I like the pulling.

Willow
The road south of Anaconda is lined thick with low willows and brown fern.
I feel unashamed passing them all the way home, even though I'm driving out of the way in a government car and kicking clouds of dust behind us.

Wisdom, Montana
Saturday afternoon is split in yellow hemispheres on either side of the road.
Plumes of smoke reach up on Beaverhead and over Big Hole Battlefield, gray refuge from the open sky.
My body is coiled with the fragrant energy of trucks. We might never reach Wisdom.

Wind
At Lost Trail I round a corner to eleven big-horned sheep. I count them while I wait, imagining the swerving of the car that will round the corner behind me.
The place where my veins and the highway break off from one another has left.

Whisk Fern
Near Hamilton there is a place of dull, bleached stones like dinosaur bones where plants snap like flags in the wind. I get out of the car. The river is cold on my feet but it matters more how stones become blue when they touch water. I am strong because I listen to my feet in the cold and do not become them. There is another place that also complains in the cold or when I stop or am alone. It is afraid of many things and wants many things. It needs me because I do not and can decide.
My body, my heart, are perfect. It is a problem of arranging, of deciding
that keeps me from fusing with the sky.

Poem for a conversation on a telephone

In June I leaned the quieter streets
to your apartment. Over alleys
and the fusion of dim moons
our slide was sideways. You followed me
down Higgins in long strides.
In the streetlight your verbs
looked muscular, your eyes bruised.
Your lips and the sound of your spine
by the river seemed big. Between
my white socks and polka-dots, I saw
the strange field between words and things
where people come together.

Because I allowed myself to wander
sidewalks and daydreams I thought
I loved this world or myself.
I wrote fairy tales. For years
I'd been using pencils
so I'd be forced to not erase.
I started this poem on a night I don't understand
changed. We have to go elsewhere.

I can't arrange the days, stones, things that were said.
Summer was warm so my shape depended.
Against the things you said I kept setting wrong.
I felt small. Hoarded needles. Didn't want dinner.
Just the same, I eat.
My mouth loves its own circular grace,
shedding the frustration of things that were whole.

To an old friend from Big Sky Village

This town is not the same.
Above are yellowbells and sunlight and people I can't,
though they live in town, call townspeople.
Nothing needs scouring so the rushes are left alone
and the brewery only does business with travelers.
These people look like boiled eggs perfect in their cups,
ski lifts which are bright against the hot sky like clean dishes.
I couldn't find a bar.
Your shadow in the hotel looked like Fred Astaire.
I looked away.

Because I needed a poem I imagined
driving through with a dying aunt but all our meals tasted like water too cold for the flume
and in a town that's always afternoon it's hard to admit you're afraid of being alone in the ground.

And it isn't the same. Next to deglassia
I couldn't remember loving words,
looked at the page and this was the next one, wide
because there were no margins
because I stopped imagining them.
For no good reason
you are crouching in the needles.
I didn't want Judy to die but I hoped those towns I walked with you would.
Or I would. And then write others.
It's been years in all places and I've been good near and far myself,
made gentle poems and neighbors, dug biscuit root
and just a moment ago death was nothing on a clean steel bridge,
sun extinguished a match lit in the larches far below
but now I must be remembering everything wrong.

when pressed about the rest of it

We must be the same age,
you touch me so well like following
old maps
or like life without maps--
that's one way we'll never be lost.
We make our own places, I think,
that words open pockets in the air
and all the rest like light shone through a jar of water,
all but our voices in little cups where we crouch
like that space we made between us in your car
after you picked me up from the airport,
and my sister was so impressed that you insisted on the long drive to Spokeanne
but I was impressed by how you didn't say anything after I told you there
about my uncle, about the mournful brown carpet
and how I didn't like to think of the world
like Borges
as a system of paths;
You only put your hand electrical
on my back and pulled over at the fountain
then told me about old houses and small towns and fires
and I thought my skin would pop,
the tight heat and those sudden little beads of water like breaking open.
That place followed us,
kept us inside so
even though we walk different
we didn't lose our faith in direction
even all the way to Potosi Springs
twilight lasted forever,
we never approached the mountain for all the hours we walked
and I didn't mind all the wine I spilled
though it remains, a secret of the air that holds us.